Ben Welsher | Writings

The bag feels light, almost weightless as I bustle through the station en route to missing my train. I'll miss my train because I can no longer control the whirlwind, because the tiger I'm riding cannot change its stripes. Missing this train took a minute of ill-preparedness which took a day of muddled thinking which has taken weeks of bi-directional candle-burning. And I won't miss this train because, for now, the tiger loves me and wants me to be happy. It carries me to the ticket barrier and we bound through. It smiles its Cheshire Cat smile at the staff who whisk me past the queue. It settles me in my seat with such silken grace as to make all this seem so easy, so inevitable that a greater romantic than I (and that is no mean feat) would cry 'destiny!' But the tiger just smiles. And if I've manifested away the rough edges of my chosen course and sworn there are no rocks below the lovely smoothness of this water then I have also pressed my wet finger to th...

Day 101 - Saigon Saigon...shit, I'm in Saigon. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back in Bridgwater... I stopped the bike on some non-descript bit of pavement in the middle of the city, turned off the engine and called time. It wasn't a triumphal ride down the Champs Elysée but I was done. Mission accomplished. Even if I got squished under a bus riding from this spot to my hotel they couldn't take my achievement away from me, 'they' being no-one in particular. And what about me? I do a brief monologue to camera to record the moment. No-one looks twice at foreigners talking enthusiastically into little black boxes on sticks anymore but this is only for my edification. So, again, what about me? I think I feel relief. I don't know if I have more pleasure in the success of achieving my goal or at the evasion of disappointment. Those may be two sides of the same coin but they may also be reflective of how a person views their life. Do they view it as a pu...

Day 100 - Mũi Né Cruising in the sunshine, towards my finish line. Nothing could stop me now except exceptionally poor judgement or very bad luck. Back to that poor judgement... As previously stated my bike (who shall remain nameless) was not in the first flight of youth when I bought it. The Bonnie Blue of the road, she'd had a lot of riders. It had near enough required one of those electric heart re-starters you find in phone boxes these days to get it going at first. The speedo had never worked which, as I never knew what the speed limit was anyway, didn't seem a problem. But it made it slightly tricky to argue with the man who had just told me you were breaking the speed limit He might have been right. There's every chance he was right. But since I'd likely been breaking the speed limit all-day, everyday for the last eight days it seemed a bit late to be telling me now. Given that the man was a policeman however, it was more than just a casual observation. It was...

Day 99 - Nha Trang Ben don't surf. He do look at beaches. Them's the breaks. Charlie don't surf either so there was not much to see in Nha Trang except sand and water under a grey sky. Stepping out of the hotel in search of my morning coffee I found myself unsure why I came here so I went to look at the beach in case that was the reason. It wasn't. I think I just liked the name of the place. I also wanted to get ahead of schedule so the previous day I'd decided to to find out just how far I could ride. It hadn't got off to the best start as, after my dinner in the silent restaurant, I'd returned to my room only to be woken by doors slamming with a startling ferocity. Someone on my hallway was very displeased with something, possibly doors. They kept this up for over an hour and my early start was out of the window. After packing up I resolved to just give the throttle a flick and see where I ended up. Once on the road things improved markedly. The scenery w...

Day 97 - Hoài Tân I'm somewhere but I'm not sure where. In a geographical sense I'm by the beach in Vietnam. In a town that may or may not be called Hoài Tân. It's the place nearby whose name remains when you zoom out of Google Maps. In a numerical sense I'm 1000km into a 2000km journey so, according to Pythagoras, halfway. In a specific sense I'm in a bar that is so empty of other people that my thoughts seem to echo even though the place has no walls. The only sound is the fan cooling me and the waves hitting the beach. I cough and it sounds like a foghorn. The staff mill about in the background but they have no English and I am deeply alone. I find the situation strange rather than unpleasant, though I feel bound to search my feelings. In a personal sense I find myself unsure if I'm the person I was, the person that pursued an unfulfilling life to breaking point. I suspect not but it is hard to judge when you're inside the fishbowl. Rory would insis...

Day 95 - Hội An Umbrella eh? Would you like an umbrella sir? Eh Eh? Cometh the rains in central Vietnam (and they do cometh) cometh the men with the means to keep you dry. My path had crossed Rory's again and we were sat outside a bar in Hội An as rain gently pattered the glistening streets. We took it in turns to politely decline the repeated offer from the salesmen who appeared in their multitudes after the first drop hit the ground. There was however no need for their flimsy, mass-produced protection from the elements. We *were* the elements. Toughened and smoothed by hills and valleys and time. Two pebbles in the stream. I'd got to Hội An the night before and realising that Rory was in town had agreed to join him on an organised pub crawl. It was like a form of speed-dating without the prospect of a date at the end of it. Most conversations with the other 'crawlers lasted only a few minutes and covered the basics of name, nationality, where you'd been and where you...